More Snow, More Quickly, Less Energy

What's Happening at Jiminy?

Here it is the day before Thanksgiving, two days before the first day of skiing and riding, and this is the first blog!

Where to start……maybe an over view?

You may remember last year we were working on the second generation of a new snow making technology that operates at 1:1 as a high flow, or 2:1 as a low flow, Air to Water ratio. We loving refer to the technology as “The Sledge Hammer”; technically it is the LPX-Y Gen 3. This technology allows us the make more snow and use less electricity. With the mix of snow guns we currently have, we are operating our system at 3:1 Air to Water Ratio. The more Gen 3’s we get the lower the A/W ratio becomes.

We have taken this LPX-Y Gen 3 “The Sledge Hammer” technology to South Eastern Australia in June and Southern California in early November to continue to perfect it.

Meanwhile back at Jiminy:

(1) We have added a few more system control valves to allow the operation of all of our water pumps to provide water to their respective zones. That system change allows us to maintain the highest possible water pressure in each section of the mountain. Higher water pressure equals more water converted into snow and higher snow quality. “The Sledge Hammer” goal is to convert the most number of gallons of water using the least amount of air. In past years Jiminy would convert 2,500 gallons per minute (gpm) at warm temperature and increase as the temperature dropped. “The Sledge Hammer” gets us to 4,000 gpm using the same amount of air.

(2) We have an energy reduction application with our electric utility essentially asking them to help fund the replacement of older energy in-efficient snow making technology with the new energy efficient LPX-Y technology.

(3) We are adding 72 LPX snow guns this season scattered mainly in Snowmaking Objective One and Two. This creates “The Sledge Hammer”.

More Snow….. Faster….. Less Energy
Come see it and ski & ride it!
We open Friday!
See you out on the slopes!
Jim